348 Alhambra Circle, Coral Gables (305) 447-9199 dentistry@lesliehallerdmd.com
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Our Philosophy

# You cannot build a healthy child on a closed airway.

And you cannot repair an adult’s health without reopening it. Everything this practice does follows from that.

The premise

## Dentistry has spent a century looking at the wrong end of the problem.

Teeth don’t grow in a vacuum. They arrive in a jaw whose shape was set years earlier by how a child held their tongue, how they breathed, how they slept. By the time crowding or a bad bite shows up in a dental chair, the structural decisions have already been made — often in early childhood, often by the airway.

Conventional dentistry treats the teeth as the problem. Straighten them, crown them, extract them for space. Airway dentistry treats the teeth as a symptom — a readout of what the face, the jaw, and the upper airway have been doing for years.

That shift in starting point changes almost everything downstream: what we screen for, who we refer to, when we intervene, and what we refuse to do.

01

### The airway builds the face. Not the other way around.

How a child breathes — through the nose, with the tongue at rest on the palate — is the single strongest shaper of jaw development. Nose breathing with proper tongue posture expands the palate from the inside and drives the mid-face forward. Chronic mouth breathing does the opposite: a narrow, high-vaulted palate, a long face, a receded chin, crowded teeth.

Most of what gets diagnosed later as orthodontic crowding or a “bad bite” is not primarily genetic. It is developmental. And development can be redirected.

A crooked smile is rarely a cosmetic story. It is usually an airway story, told in teeth.
02

### The body will remodel itself when given the right conditions.

Dental school used to teach that adult palates could not be expanded — that by the time growth plates closed, the structural window was over. That teaching is outdated. Epigenetic expansion appliances, worked with consistently over 12 to 24 months, produce measurable remodeling of the maxilla and nasal floor in adults. The evidence is now clear enough that it has changed the standard of care among clinicians who do this work.

The appliances do not force the mouth into a new shape. They create conditions — gentle, continuous, patient-tolerated — and the body does the building. Our job is to make those conditions available and to hold patients through the timeline it takes.

We work with biology, not against it. The body will do the work — if we stop interfering with it.
03

### A tongue tie is a whole-body problem.

For decades, a tongue tie was treated as a breastfeeding problem — if it was recognized at all. In older children and adults it was rarely recognized, because the question was never asked. A restricted tongue that cannot rest on the palate during growth contributes to mouth breathing, poor sleep, forward head posture, chronic neck and jaw pain, speech difficulties, and reflux.

We release tongue ties in infants with a CO2 laser because it is the narrow window when the airway can still be built correctly. We release them in adults because it is never actually too late to remove a structural restriction that is shaping how you breathe and sleep tonight.

04

### Early intervention changes the trajectory of a life.

A child treated at four has a fundamentally different developmental trajectory than a child treated at fourteen. Catch a narrow palate or tongue restriction early, and the jaw can still be built. Wait, and the options narrow to surgery, extraction orthodontics, or lifelong CPAP.

This is why we screen children for airway development, not just for cavities. It is the single most consequential thing a dentist can offer a family — and it is the single thing most dental practices do not do.

The cheapest airway intervention is the one done at four. Everything after is more expensive, more invasive, and less effective.
05

### The mouth is part of the body.

Airway dentistry does not exist without ENTs who address nasal obstruction and adenoid hypertrophy. It does not exist without myofunctional therapists who retrain tongue and facial muscles. It does not exist without sleep physicians, pediatricians, lactation consultants, and speech therapists. It is medicine that happens to touch the mouth.

The practice is structured around referral and coordination, not around doing everything in-house. Dr. Haller sees herself as a general contractor — and the network she has built over the last decade is a significant part of what patients actually pay for.

06

### We say no to what isn’t this work.

The practice does not do routine cleanings, cosmetic veneers, whitening, or general family dentistry. That is a deliberate scope. Doing one thing well at a practice this small requires not doing the other things at all.

It also means we turn away patients whose needs are better served elsewhere. If an airway consultation reveals that what you need is a good general dentist or an orthodontist, we will say so directly and point you to one.

A small scope is not a limitation. It is the reason the work is good.
Two different starting points

## The same mouth, a different question.

Conventional dentistry asks
“What’s wrong with the teeth?”

- Crowded teeth → straighten them, extract if needed
- Worn teeth → crown them, night-guard at bedtime
- Sleep apnea → refer to a sleep doctor for CPAP
- Child with a narrow palate → wait until they’re older for braces
- Tongue tie → only if it’s causing obvious breastfeeding trouble
- TMJ pain → splint therapy, muscle relaxants

Airway dentistry asks
“Why did the mouth end up this way?”

- Crowded teeth → the jaw didn’t develop fully; expand if the window is still open
- Worn teeth → the airway is closing at night; address the cause
- Sleep apnea → structural, and often reversible without CPAP
- Child with a narrow palate → intervene now, before the face is finished
- Tongue tie → screen every patient; release where it is affecting function
- TMJ pain → usually downstream of airway and tongue-posture issues

## None of this is alternative medicine.

Everything on this page is grounded in peer-reviewed research, in the clinical consensus of the physicians and dentists leading this field, and in what Dr. Haller has seen across more than three decades of practice. It is simply a different question asked at the start of the appointment — and a different set of tools used to answer it.

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See what a different question reveals.
An airway consultation is 90 minutes of a different kind of dental appointment. Most patients leave with the first complete explanation they’ve ever had.
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